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Saturday, December 15, 2007

A little heathier treat amongst the sea of rich holiday cookies and treats...

A few days ago, I made some cookies to put in the freezer so we would have something to munch on while we were finishing up the gift baking this weekend. This was a good idea as it is helping keep us out of the piles of goodies laying around - it also gets bonus points for being a pretty healthy cookie!

While we normally groove on cookies that are more crispy, these homely Super Cookies have a bendable softness to them, yet they are not spongy or "cake-like" either. These spicy little guys attain a lot of their snazzy flavor from cinnamon, ginger and cloves added to the dough. With an interesting combination of shredded carrots, chewy dried cranberries, dark bittersweet chocolate, toasted slivered almonds, oats and white whole-wheat flour, the cookies bring lots of good nutrition in each bite.

When you bake them, you want the centers to be just barely set - the cookies will finish cooking as they cool on the baking sheet. Don't be tempted to try and remove them from the sheet too early as they are quite soft while warm and may break apart. Now, with all these healthy ingredients, do they have that "healthy" taste to them? Well, yes and no. They do have a slight wheat-y taste to them and since the fat used in the cookie is canola oil, they do not have a "buttery" flavor that most oatmeal-type cookies have. Having said that, between the chunky pieces of chocolate, sweet/tart cranberries, crunchy almonds and fragrant spices, there is plenty going on in the cookie that distracts from those good-for-you aspects and makes the cookie seem more like a tasty treat. The flavor kind of reminded us of a loaded spice cake, minus the frosting of course, with a soft, moist and chewy texture. If you don't have white whole-wheat flour, go ahead and use all-purpose - but we both thought it worked quite well with this cookie.

7 comments:

Thanks for this recipe! They sound great, and you are right--it IS nice to have something even a little "healthier" than the traditional holiday cookie this time of year! I will be making these tomorrow to take into work with me on Monday!

... and here I was baking my fav little Chocolate Covered Maraschino Cherry cookies.... hahahah ! had 3 even before I iced them....

...tomorrow I ice them with chocolate cherry icing ..... oooooooooo .... I am bad. Maybe I better make a batch of these too ..and snack on these instead. Wonder if my dress slacks will fit by Friday? hmmmm better hop on the treadmill every day til then for sure.

Couple more days and you'll show us all the goodies. That's great that you still do it years after years. I hope they appreciate all the efforts and love that you put into these treats. Have a good Sunday.